Here's an interesting thought : the gullible sheeple/lockdown fanboys and girls are the ones most likely to want to take a vaccine. If they've been regularly taking flu vaccines year on year (bearing in mind that since the 80s, these vaccines have typically had formaldehyde and mercury added to them), do you suppose that's what's stupefied them and frightened them sh!tless?

Here's an interesting thought : the gullible sheeple/lockdown fanboys and girls are the ones most likely to want to take a vaccine. If they've been regularly taking flu vaccines year on year (bearing in mind that since the 80s, these vaccines have typically had formaldehyde and mercury added to them), do you suppose that's what's stupefied them and frightened them sh!tless?

I don't know. Does mercury have a laxative effect?

Hi, I'm a bit confused about the false positives. On the one hand it's great if the number of cases is overreported. But if reported positivies are increasing exponentially wouldn't that mean that even the "real" positive cases are also increasing exponentially?

This is a really simplistic and unrealistic explanation, but I hope it makes sense.

Let's say the false positive rate is 1%. That means if you test 100 people who don't have the virus, you'd get 1 positive result - a false one, because nobody has it.

If the prevalence of the virus was really high - say, half the people are infected - when you ran your test, it would give you 51 positives, made up of the 50 real ones plus 1 false one. That wouldn't matter much, because the false positive is only a small fraction of the total number of positive tests (1/51 x 100 = 1.9%).

However, if the prevalence is much lower - say, only 2% of your sample actually have the virus - then when you test the 100 people, you get 3 positives: the 2 real ones plus 1 false one. So now instead of having just 1.9% false positives, it's now 1/3 x 100 = 33%.

If the prevalence is the same as the false positive rate of your test, half of the positive results you get would be false ones (your test of 100 people would detect 1 person with the virus and 1 without).

If the prevalence is lower again, virtually all the "positives" you detect would be false.

Hi, I'm afraid to admit that I'm a little late to the party.
Not the scepticism of the reaction to the virus but rather my unwillingless to actually look into the data and form an educated opinion rather than just blindly accept what the government(s) were telling me.
OK, the data wasn't available early on so I can forgive myself a little, can't I? I even ended up financially better off which seemed a fairly decent price to pay for 3 months of no work.
However, I've sort of had an epiphany. I think it's because I was fortunate to get a week away in the sun and it gave me some time to think.
In the short week that I was away the Country had changed. It was evident from the moment i got back to Gatwick. I can't quite put my finger on it but it may have been the masks. Where as before I went they were barely noticable now they're everywhere.
I'd been home only 24 hours before our Dear Leader announced his new solutions on Tuesday and they have tipped me over the edge.
My wife is at her wits end as i've become obsessed with finding stuff that debunks Whitty and Vallance et al. It's everywhere and I could kick myself for not taking a more serious interest before.
Anyway, to the OP. You are not alone and i'll do my damndest to spread the word.

My wife is at her wits end as i've become obsessed with finding stuff that debunks Whitty and Vallance et al. It's everywhere and I could kick myself for not taking a more serious interest before.
Anyway, to the OP. You are not alone and i'll do my damndest to spread the word.

Well, welcome to sanity corner! 😀 It's nice to see people who hadn't thought much about it before changing their minds.

When this all started, I was supportive of the lockdown and the government's measures to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. It all seemed sensible considering we didn't know how vulnerable people were to the virus. And where I live is one of those places described as a "hospital desert" - I have a friend who works for the NHS, who said anyone who contracts covid here "may as well go and lie down in a field to die". Other places were having field hospitals built. We got a temporary mortuary. It was all pretty scary.

But as time went on, the government's response seemed all the more hysterical and illogical, and the rules have become more insane with each new iteration.

I really think there will be no end to this unless ordinary people start to resist in sufficient numbers, so it becomes impossible to police or enforce the rules.